Hi! yes I suppose it might not be common usage to all, but if you use Chambers (when I first used it more intended for scientists than Oxford, which I hate!) then poaching is defined generally as to encroach or seek an unfair advantage or to take from another's ground - in which case you can see where poaching anything, including the grazing, comes from. Apparently from old french to thrust or poke into (ain't language amazin' !).
Sheila
SH-D ArchaeoZoology
http://www.shd-archzoo.co.uk
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----- Original Message -----
From: [log in to unmask] href="mailto:[log in to unmask]">Richard H. Meadow
To: [log in to unmask] href="mailto:[log in to unmask]">[log in to unmask]
Sent: Tuesday, March 20, 2007 10:20 PM
Subject: Re: [ZOOARCH] Recent publications on the ICAZ website

Hi Ian,
Perhaps some of our readers don't know what 'poaching' is - like me, until I looked it up in the Oxford English Dictionary. Here is what I found (9th meaning of the second form of the verb 'poach'):

poach, v.2


9. trans.

    a. To churn up (soft or sodden ground) by trampling or similar movement; to cut up (turf, etc.) with hooves; to thrust or stamp down with the feet. Now chiefly Brit. regional.

1677 R. PLOT Nat. Hist. Oxford-shire 247 The Horses going..in a string and keeping the furrow, to avoid poching the Land. 1702 R. NEVE Apopiroscopy II. ii. 127 In this way, a wet and clay Ground is not so much poached by the Feet of the Oxen. a1735 EARL OF HADDINGTON Treat. Forest-trees 46 in J. G. Reid Scots Gardiner (1756), Cattle should be taken off, lest they potch the ground. 1766 Pract. Observ. Lucerne, Turnips, Burnet, Timothy Grass, & Fowl Meadow Grass 38 As it [sc. timothy grass] delights in rather moist meadows, the ground might be poached, were cattle tempted to go early to feed on it. 1814 SCOTT Waverley III. xv*. 223 The cattle of the villagers..had poached into black mud the verdant turf. 1816 SCOTT Old Mortality ii, in Tales of my Landlord 1st Ser. III. 32 The passage of the main body, in many instances, potched up the swamps through which they passed. 1849 H. STEPHENS Bk. of Farm (ed. 2) I. 194/1 The land..ought not to be cut up and poached by the cart-wheels and horses' feet. 1894 Times 18 Nov. 4/3 Pastures are soddened to an extent that must result in their being badly ‘poached’ where the stock cannot be taken off them. 1910 R. KIPLING Rewards & Fairies 282 The ground about was poached and stoached with sliding hoof-marks. 1986 C. CULPIN Farm Machinery (ed. 11) ii. 51/1 On wet, heavy land, tracklayers, on account of their low ground-pressure, can often be used when other types poach the soil so much that they cannot be profitably employed. 2004 Guardian (Electronic ed.) 2 Dec., We found a snipe that must have been probing for worms in the mud poached by cattle hooves.

I am glad to see that the word was used as recently as a couple of years ago in the Guardian.

Richard Meadow

Ian L. Baxter wrote:
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The following short articles have just been published on the ICAZ website:
 
Baxter, I.L. 2007. Canid damage to sheep bones; gnawed, consumed, regurgitated, digested and defecated: A case study. http://www.alexandriaarchive.org/icaz/icazForum/viewtopic.php?t=876
 
Baxter, I.L. 2007. Poaching by tethered horses. http://www.alexandriaarchive.org/icaz/icazForum/viewtopic.php?t=875
 
Both are available as downloads.
 
Ian L. Baxter